‘I’ve not joined a fief yet, Master,’ Bello said. ‘I just…’
Holden shook his head. ‘We all have to pay the rent,’ he said sadly.
‘Even you?’ Somehow Bello had never thought of old Joyless Bidewell making the extra climb to Holden’s rooms above. ‘But you’re doing well? You said so.’
‘That’s a close neighbour to doing badly. They live on the same street.’ Holden tousled Bello’s hair. ‘Now you’ve got this far, now you see all these men, these criminals, making more money in a night than you see yourself in a month, you’ll see things in a different way. You’ll be a fief-soldier soon enough, working from the ground up. It’s a shame, but you’re not the first.’
‘Master Holden…’ He wanted to say that he wanted to be a freelancer, a duellist, like Tisamon or Holden himself. It was not a job for a Fly-kinden, though, not even for the biggest and hardiest Fly-kinden there ever was.
‘Go find yourself a seat,’ the Beetle said to him, and passed on through the crowd.
Bello looked around, and saw that there were at least a dozen Fly-kinden already in the rafters, finding niches where they could enjoy a unique viewpoint. Some were wearing Firecaller scarves but he found just then he wanted to watch the fight more than he feared them. He let his wings take him up to a beam and sat there, his legs dangling. He felt the eyes of Clavia on him as he flew.
The sand, where the fighters would square off, was nothing grand, just a strip about twenty feet long, no more than five feet wide. In the fiefs they liked their fights close and bloody. At one end the Firecaller leadership sat enthroned. At the other end were Clavia and her few minions. Along each side, close enough that a missed stroke could clip them, were the gamblers, the drinkers and the fight enthusiasts who had come to make a night of it.
Tisamon stepped down before the Maynard men. He cut an odd, stark figure in his green arming jacket and gold brooch, his folding-blade gauntlet on his hand and his arm spines jutting. The crowd quieted. It was poor form to shout at the fighters.
A Beetle-kinden man stepped down before the Firecallers, and it was a moment before Bello cried out in protest, voice high above the mumble of the crowd. They looked, they all looked up to see him: a skinny little Fly-kinden child with his mouth open and his face pasty. He had eyes only for one, though: Holden, with a Firecaller scarf about his neck. Holden, looking up at him briefly, face resigned.
We all have to pay the rent. It’s a shame, but you’re not the first. Bello felt numb. The crowd had already forgotten him, laughed him off. Only Holden spared him another glance. He was dressed in armour of hard leather: cuirass, pauldrons, kilt, bracers and greaves. The crowd went quiet again as he took his swords from their scabbards in a long-practised motion, holding them almost crossed before him.
Tisamon had dropped into his stance the moment the steel was drawn, his claw hooked back, one open hand thrust forward. He was quite still, waiting for Holden to come to him. For a long time neither man moved. The crowd, no longer restless, became more and more involved, feeling the tension between the two pull taut.
Holden let out a shout and was at the other man, cutting at his ready hand, then thrusting past at his chest. Tisamon shrugged aside from the lunge, beat the cut away with his palm, was past Holden in a moment. They were left at opposite ends of the sand, no blood drawn. There had not even been the sound of steel on steel.
Holden, with the burning gaze of the House of Maynard on his back, approached again. This time he changed his stance, one blade high and one low. He thrust with both, then cut out and wide to stop Tisamon getting past him again. Tisamon’s offhand passed before his face and then cut down, slamming the spines through Holden’s shoulder armour but not biting deep. Bello heard the Beetle-kinden hiss. The shortswords drove in whilst Tisamon was close, trying to catch him. Again the other man was gone when they arrived. Holden was strong, and he was quick for a big man, but he could not pin his enemy down. Tisamon danced him from one end of the sand to the other, in a space designed to be too small for that, meant to force a bloody confrontation.
They paused, the length of the sand between them. Holden had so far been doing most of the work but his people were an enduring lot. Neither man was breathing hard. There was something about his stance, though, that Bello saw: something about Tisamon’s too. It was as though the two of them were party to a secret that nobody else watching had understood. In seeing it, Bello saw the secret, too, became an initiate into that tiny mystery.
They closed again and this time Holden held nothing back. His swords slammed at Tisamon from all angles, drove him before them like a leaf in a storm. There was a rapid patter of metal as Tisamon’s claw came in at last, moving like a living thing, gathering Holden’s blades and casting them like chaff. Tisamon struck with his offhand, the spines scoring across the other man’s face, and as Holden cried out, he died. The claw made its first and fatal strike, a swift dart of silver between Holden’s neck and shoulder. Bello felt the stab of it, even though his champion had won.
There was a hush as the spectators cast their thoughts back over those last moments, reconstructing them. Then the crowd, the idle punters, began to clap and cheer, and the lucky ones started to call in their creditors. Tisamon remained quite still, though, the dead man’s blood on his blade, and his eyes on the Firecallers. All the Maynard men had drawn knives or swords.
Tisamon had made sure he was at the far end of the sand, closest to the Firecaller chief. There was a lot said in his stare about the cost of forcing the issue. Every man in a red Firecaller scarf was waiting for the word.
The Firecallers left. Their leader stood up, face like thunder, and walked out without a backward glance, and the scarves followed him as swiftly as they could. The turf war with the House of Maynard was not done, but they had lost face, lost the challenge. The streets they had wagered had gone back to the Maynard, who would be able to muster a few more allies with this victory. The balance between them had changed.
There was another duel on tonight. People were getting in drinks and food for it. Tisamon went to Clavia and her people, and Bello saw money change hands. He dropped from the rafters down to the sand, ignoring the looks he got at this breach of etiquette. He knelt by Holden’s body, feeling cold. The man had sold him out, it seemed certain. He had taken the part of the Firecallers. He had betrayed all the people he shared the tenement with. He had once been the brightest part of Bello’s life.
Tisamon was leaving, pausing in the doorway to look back. Bello approached him hesitantly.
‘Do you… want your money?’ he asked.
‘Hold it for me,’ Tisamon told him. He was swift and deadly, but he was not Holden, who had lived on the floor above and died on the sand below.
But Holden was gone, and Tisamon was going. ‘Please, Master Tisamon… Can’t I…?’
The fighter stopped. ‘Find other heroes than men like us, Fly-child. We do not last.’
‘But what can I do now?’
Tisamon weighed him down with the same stare that had quelled the Firecallers, and gave his judgment, spoke the death sentence.
‘Go home, boy. It’s over. Go home and be thankful you still have one.’
‘You know, Yot, this is particularly fine wine,’ the Wasp officer said, swilling the dregs round in his bowl. Sfayot obediently leant forward to pour him another serving before setting the jug back on the upturned barrel that served them as a table.
‘The Thorn Bugs make it, in the North Empire,’ he explained.
The Wasp gave a surprised snort. ‘Who’d have thought any people so ugly could make anything so pleasant.’ He leant back in his seat, an elaborate thing of cane and dyed wicker that had presumably been some Dragonfly noble’s pride and joy before it became spoils of war. The hut they were in, the Empire’s makeshift clearing house for its plunder, was piled high with all manner of goods that the Dragonflies and their subjects had once held dear, some of it already boxed up and some of it loose: silks and fine cloth, rolled artwork, statuary, books and scrolls. Only the gold was missing. The gold was being sent back to the Empire as a priority, to pay for the ongoing war.